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Are you a fan of Lovecraft’s stories but maybe not his poetry? I thought that was the case with me until listening to H.P. Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth and other Poems. Magnificently read by Will Hart with music by Graham Plowman, the experience was head and shoulders above merely reading the poems. I have already listened to most of the tracks more than once.

Visit CthulhuWho1’s Blogfor more information and various links including a lengthy sample on YouTube.

Posted on YouTube by Yours Truly, Will Hart

“A Teaser Sample file of snippets from all 48 tracks of Fedogan & Bremer’s CD of, “H. P. Lovecraft’s Fungi From Yuggoth and Other Poems” read by William E. Hart and scored by Graham Plowman; with Liner Notes by S. T. Joshi. These 21st-Century readings include all 36 Fungi from Yuggoth cosmic sonnets, plus a dozen more of H.P.L.’s grand poems, and a 12-page booklet!”

What a Great Christmas, Cthulhumas, Birthday, or Everyday Gift for Any Lovecraftian or Poetry Fan!

Another treat from Benny’s The Illustrated Omar Khayyam. I love most of Benny’s illustrations, but some grab my attention more than others. I found this one especially striking. Details about Benny’s new translation.

This mound in some remote and dateless day
Rear’d o’er a Chieftain of the Age of Hills,
May here detain thee Traveller! from thy road
Not idly lingering. In his narrow house
Some Warrior sleeps below: his gallant deeds
Haply at many a solemn festival
The Bard has harp’d, but perish’d is the song
Of praise, as o’er these bleak and barren downs
The wind that passes and is heard no more.
Go Traveller on thy way, and contemplate
Glory’s brief pageant, and remember then
That one good deed was never wrought in vain.

For those who are interested in Omar Khayyam my version shall certainly resonate as true to the original. Imagine the pleasure of reading him for the first time? Eight hundred years later you can relive the pleasure his quatrains first produced among his readers.

“In the ten sections of his book, Benny Thomas has composed his own Khayyāmasque quatrains covering most of the central and salient features of Khayyāmian themes. Whether it is in the chapter titled “Cup of Wine” or “Love Feast,” the essence of Omar Khayyām’s Rubā‘iyyāt is echoed in the poems of Benny Thomas. For those interested in a mystical reading of Khayyām’s quatrains, this collection of poems provides an invaluable insight…” (Selected from the Foreword by Prof. Mehdi Aminrazavi the author of The Wine of Wisdom.)

How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mind Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind; Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude, And wreck the solace of the poet’s mood! Young Zeno, practic’d in the Stoic’s art, Rejects the language of the glowing heart; Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws; Condemns th’ effect whilst looking for the cause; Freezes poor Ovid in an ic’d review, And sneers because his fables are untrue! In search of Truth the hopeful zealot goes, But all the sadder tums, the more he knows! Stay! vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast The graceful legends of the story’d past; Whose tongue in censure flays th’ embellish’d page, And scolds the comforts of a dreary age: Would’st strip the foliage from the vital bough Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou? Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye Discerns a Pantheon in…

Since I’ve been reading so much about Peru, I felt bad that I had not read any Peruvian poetry. According to what I’ve read, the national poet of that land was César Vallejo (1892-1938). I took a fancy to the following poem, which I present in both English and Spanish:

Black Stone on Top of a White Stone

I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris—it does not bother me—
Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

It shall be a Thursday, because today, Thursday
As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders
To the evil. Never like today have I turned,
And headed my whole journey to the ways where I am alone.

César Vallejo is dead. They struck him,
All of them, though he did nothing to them, They…